bearflinn

[bearflinn]

Wtf are they on? Sure sometimes sex scenes come across as gratuitous. But to make the claim that they don't and can't have any narrative purpose is ridiculous.

Even just from a characterization perspective, a physically intimate scene that never 'fades to black' can communicate more about a character than pages and pages of dialogue/exposition.

Not to mention how drastically those scenes can change character dynamics afterwards. Creating tension and/or driving the narrative forward.

Shout out if you also include erotica or smut in your works to turn meaningful narrative into an indulgent detour designed only to stimulate arousal

[bearflinn]

Most questions I see from young writers isn't how to become a better writer, it’s about how to write “correctly.”

What's the most popular story to write? How do I make a character no one will hate? How can I tell this story with inoffensive and sanitized language? Which tools should I use to make my writing sound better than it is?

It’s discouraging. You can’t become a better artist by hobbling yourself out the gate. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to fuck up and start over. You need to.

The solution to this stagnation is to read as much as you can, write as much as you can, and learn from other authors. Treating writing as a minefield will only harm your confidence and kill your creativity.

If your goal is never piss anyone off, never receive a mean comment, never screw up and do it wrong, then let me tell you, you're in the wrong profession.

[bearflinn]

For us Americans, this is what the first amendment is supposed to guarantee. Not that you can say whatever you want without consequence, but that the government can't punish you for saying/creating things it doesn't like or agree with.

I hate that the term "freedom of speech" has been twisted to mean: "I should be able to spew hateful shit without people getting mad at me."

No matter what you write, you shouldn’t be jailed over fiction. I don’t know why that’s such a confusing and controversial stance to take. You should not go to prison for imaginary crimes

[bearflinn]

Writing Advice: Worldbuilding as Tension

One of the most common pieces of advice/points of critique I see for writers of all skill levels, is avoiding exposition dumps, often accompanied by the age old 'show don't tell'.

When writing fiction in general, but especially sci-fi and fantasy, it's important that the reader understands how your world differs from our own. And worldbuilding is one of the few places where you're less likely to get hit by the proverbial SHOW hammer, since some things, like the rules of your magic system, are difficult to show. So telling becomes more permissible.

However, it can be incredibly tempting to just infodump at every opportunity. Especially for those of us who have a wiki with more words than the finished project will have. But as I'm sure you've heard before, doing this can break immersion and destroy the pacing of your narrative.

While there are multiple ways to make exposition engaging, I'm going to focus on the approach I use most commonly: The Drip Feed.

Filling an Ocean One Droplet at a Time

Before we get into the actual methodology, I want to take a moment to dissect how and why exposition dumps can be problematic.

The Problem: Context, Relevancy, and Retention

Context is both the thing we're trying to communicate, and the source of excessive exposition. It starts simple, like maybe the reader needs to know that the main character is poor. And I guess I should explain why they're poor. Next thing you know you've spent 4 pages describing the socioeconomics of your world.

That's what I call 'context chaining'. Since everything in fleshed out worlds is interconnected, it can be very easy to just keep on filling in the gaps. Preemptively answering any questions the reader might have. The problem?

Relevancy. When you introduce a ton of worldbuilding in one fell swoop, the vast majority of it won't be relevant to the current place in the narrative, even if it will eventually be relevant for the story overall. Which, you guessed it, hurts:

Retention. Without immediate relevant context for the worldbuilding you introduce. Readers won't have anything to anchor the information too. Calling back to the example I used earlier, readers will remember that the character is poor, and they will likely remember why. Anything beyond that is unlikely to be retained.

The solution?

Restraint and Trust

For many of us, the world we've built is a large draw of the narrative we're crafting. However, one of the best ways to draw people into your world is to talk about it as little as possible. But how will they know about x?? They won't, until it matters.

Now I'm not talking about soft worldbuilding. This will work for both hard and soft worldbuilding (honestly it's even better for hard worldbuilding).

Instead of straight up telling the reader about the world and all of its intricacies. Introduce the most complex aspects as questions that you answer bit by bit throughout the narrative. As an example, maybe our poor character is struggling to buy food because they went into debt casting spells.

Suddenly, the reader is wondering: Why do spells cost money? Who controls the supply of magic and/or components? Is spellcasting something everyone can do? What kinds of magic are more valuable than eating? and so many more.

But here's the key: don't answer them. At least, not until absolutely necessary or there's an organic place to do so. Wait until the perspective character is directly interacting with one of those questions. Maybe they walk past a trickling fountain, revealing that the mana wells are running dry. And later debt collectors come for the main character, revealing who controls the mana.

Unanswered questions are a huge source of tension, and worldbuilding can provide a subtle sustained undercurrent that you can leverage to propel the narrative in slow points and/or make your payoffs hit even harder. All you have to do is answer the right question at the right time.

The best part of this method is that by waiting until your perspective character is engaging with a part of your world. It allows you to convey exposition and character at the same time. But what about worldbuilding that the characters don't interact with directly? It doesn't matter.

Well it does, to you as the author. But in general, if something doesn't matter to at least one of your characters, it won't matter to your readers. If your character isn't a politician, they aren't going to care about the intricacies of your political system. So why would the reader?

In short, keep any worldbuilding closely tied to your characters' experience, and let the reader wonder. The end result is a smoother and more engaging learning curve that pulls the reader in. Giving them the satisfaction of putting the pieces together themselves.

If you have any questions or additional thoughts let me know!

[bearflinn]

I fall under the secret 3rd type of writer: I flip between the two like a metronome while telling myself I'll fix it in post.

There are two types of writers:

1. 'It's fiction, it doesn't need to make sense!'

2. 'I didn't account for the rotation of the planet and how that affects the constalations while my characters stargazed at different times of year, I have failed as a writer, and this entire thing is trash'

[bearflinn]

Excellent tips and habits for writers

The advice I've given before is to write every scene you think of, no matter if it gets used or not. Its always a great idea to go back every once and a while and edit these scenes, or revise them.

Never force inspiration or a scene. If it isn't coming naturally, take a break and come back later or the next day. it's important to give yourself time to think. use your break to day dream about your story and what could come next. if your brain is happy, this should be relatively simple. If your brain isn't happy, then you need to take a longer break, stop writing for the day all together, or write something else.

if you're a pantser, like me, and it's hard to plot. You can practice reverse plotting, and plot your story as you go. make notes of things that happen in your story, changes in a character, changes in the plot, changes in the setting, dates for events, timelines, important information that's been revealed, anything you deem important to your story.

always reread what you've already written. don't try to edit it. turn off your editor brain and reread your story so far before you resume writing, so you can get into the voice and tone that you've already established.

if you're finding it difficult to start writing or keep writing. try turning off your internal editor and free write. it's good practice to be able to write down your unfiltered thoughts or daydreams without having to stop and edit while you're writing. it helps with your writing flow, getting the scene down onto the page, and increases your writing intuition.

before you write, always take time to daydream or think about your story beforehand. it helps things go much smoother in the long run.

if you've been working on something for a long time, don't pressure yourself into confinement. if you want to work on something new but you're worried about what you've been working on, don't. stop worrying and write what you want. forcing yourself to keep writing something when you don't want to is just going to make you burn out faster.

don't be afraid to create visuals or playlists that help you with what you're writing. It's an enviable talent to be able to write something off a photo you saw on pinterest, or a song you really like.

if you find yourself in a mood where you want to write really badly, but you have no idea what you want to write, and none of the prompts you find are appealing enough. find an activity you use to destress, whether its listening to music, listening to asmr, doom scrolling on social media, or browsing pinterest. go do that. chances are, you'll find something that will inspire you what to write when you're not looking for it.

[bearflinn]

Writing Sexy Female Characters in a Tasteful Way.

I recently made a post in the Writing Tea & Tips community asking about writing/describing female characters without coming across as male-gazey or overly objectifying and got some fantastic responses. So I figured I'd put something together summarizing the key takeaways from the comments on that post and my own research/thoughts. (Link to original post)

Making Them Hot: Agency, Action & Reaction

From what I've gathered, this is the line between sexualizing a character, and them being sexy. When you describe a character as being physically attractive by way of bodily traits they don't have control over, it's much more likely to be perceived as objectifying. (Which can work if that's an established trait of your perspective character, but still iffy).

Essentially your best options for making someone read as attractive is to describe things that a person in real life would have control over. For reference:

Hair. Especially aspects that require effort to achieve/maintain such as style, and to some degree, texture.

Makeup. Fairly self explanatory. But it's worth noting that in a lot of cases makeup is used to draw/detract attention from certain facial features like eyes, lips, and bone structure.

Clothing. In most cases this is probably the closest you'll ever want or need to get to describing individual body parts (tied with body language). If a character chooses to wear a revealing top, it maintains their agency while allowing the reader to infer they have something worth flaunting.

Body Language. Speaking of flaunting. Much like clothing, if a character chooses to position themselves in a provocative way, it maintains their agency while giving you the opportunity to describe what the perspective character notices.

Overall Build. This point needs to be filtered through the lens of agency. Describing an hourglass/curvy figure: objectifying. Whereas describing their build as acrobatic, athletic, muscular, etc. maintains their agency because those builds all reflect effort on the part of the character.

You almost never need to or should directly describe boob/butt size, it will come across as overt sexualization. (These are also great guidelines for complimenting someone without seeming like a creep btw.)

The only exception I can think of being implants. Since it says a lot about both the perspective character noticing the implants and that the character in question felt the need to get implants in the first place. Aka: they had agency. (This doesn't apply to compliments LMAO. You'll def seem like a creep for pointing out implants.)

When applying the tips above, remember whichever aspects you describe and how they're described will say something about the perspective character. Especially how the perspective character reacts to those observations.

Bonus tip: Femme Fatale Characters

In the context of the original post, I was specifically asking about writing seductive female characters, and got some really solid advice. Once again, it boils down to agency. Compelling seductress characters will feel like they're intentionally using everything at their disposal, physical or otherwise, to push all their mark's buttons. And the most interesting aspect of this dynamic is the resulting emotional chess match. How do they play off each other? Is the seductee falling hook line and sinker? Are they aware of what's happening and trying to resist? Are they playing along?

Anyway ramble over, if you have anything to add or think I missed the mark lmk!

Special thanks to: @wolveria @16yearsapart @imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese @inkandgasoline and @bogappreciation

[bearflinn]

Sometimes little pleasures in life are loadbearing. Whenever someone is like "If you'd just give up tea and coffee and sugar and--" im like I'll stop you right there. Because if you finish that sentence i am going to kill everyone in this building and then myself. If i have to face the horrors of the world without my little jar of caramel flavoured instant coffee i am going to go full American Psycho. Believe it or not, my main priority in life is not to have perfect teeth or be an Olympic athlete or look like a supermodel, but to actually enjoy living, because I spent far too long not doing that and it royally sucked. And boy, some people don't like hearing that. Particularly dentists

[bearflinn]

I've spent a lot of time since I started writing trying to verbalize what makes my work, or any human's work, different from AI. Because even after 3 years, when you prompt AI to write anything it just feels… Off. Like it's missing something.

It's hard to describe. The sentences are grammatically correct and the outputs as a whole are generally cohesive. But regardless of how you prompt, the output feels empty across content types.

I finally realized what the difference was after some careful analysis of pieces of art I've come to love. The thing they all had in common was they were saying something, in every moment. Beyond the words and visuals, they had something to say.

And that's where generative AI has always fallen short. While it can speak, it has nothing to say. Humans can't help it, in everything we create, we imbue it with our beliefs, life experience, and interests.

When you try to use machine learning to replicate that by feeding everything ever written or drawn into it, you lose the individuals in the average. AI can replicate the structure, but not the meaning. And I think that will always be the case, at least with our current AI technology.

While I think text-based generative AI has some legitimate use cases (image and video AI shouldn't exist and just waste energy), it pisses me off to no end when AI companies or individuals claim that it can do the job of a creative in any capacity. It can't. I don't care if it's a twitter post or a novel, AI will always be worse than a person.

[bearflinn]

"I'll cross that bridge when I figure out how the fuck to get there." Effectively sums up 90% of my writing process.

I'll have a cool idea, play the whole thing out in my head, then realize I have to get from the last thing I wrote to that point. 🙃